Weird and Cringe things you've seen while working in IT - Since everyone is too lazy to make such a thread where IT bros can vent

[Celebrate Nite]

I've discovered that phrases such as, "I want you to drive this", "I want you to lead this", and "I want you to show leadership" mean "I have a project that I want you to architect, secure, test, automate, report on, document, network, and do everything from start to finish solo. And if you tell me it's impossible, I'll reply with 'show leadership'".

For me it's usually the opposite... I get scolded for taking the initiative even though that's supposed to be a good thing.

It could be for something as simple as organizing the IT storage closet:

• Boss - "Why are you cleaning the closet?"
• Me - "Because its a mess and I can't find what I'm looking for"
• Boss - "Who told you to do this?"
• Me - "No one, I did it all on my own!. Look, I even labeled everything so you know what thing is in which place"
• Boss - "Don't you have other work you could be doing?"
• Me - "I finished all of that, and had nothing else to do, so I chose to do this"
• Boss - ".... don't do this again, I need to know what you're doing at all times"

 

[Samuel Fuller]

I've discovered that phrases such as, "I want you to drive this", "I want you to lead this", and "I want you to show leadership" mean "I have a project that I want you to architect, secure, test, automate, report on, document, network, and do everything from start to finish solo. And if you tell me it's impossible, I'll reply with 'show leadership'".

You forgot "If you succeed, all the credit will go to me alone, and if you fail, update your resume".

 

[BABANGUIDE64]

Giving users the "Freedom to fix it themselves", and boy is that a faggoty, Stallman-level bullshit way to put it, just means more idiots who know just enough to be a danger to themselves will just fuck things up worse before they come to you to fix it.

NOT WORTH THE HASSLE.

Afterall, Stallman-level bullshit doesn't bring food to your table.

 

[holy buttocks]

I was working IT at a community centre once. I wasn't supposed to be IT but the second the computer illiterate in a job with few resources sniff that you're Good With Computer you will get pigeonholed.

The people who used the computers at the community centre didn't have computers at home and came from pretty rough backgrounds. One homeless guy was caught hosting a shitty Geocities tier website on an rPi stuck behind the mess of wires behind the computers. I found the site and it was full of Nazi propaganda about how he is the ubermensch or whatever. Many such cases of neo-nazis actually being bottom of the barrel examples of their race

Next we were running into issues with someone searching like. Hardcore porn. Really nasty stuff. Emulated incest, painal, the whole deal. I really didn't want to filter the network so I wanted to have a chat with this individual. I got security to pull cameras up and identify the culprit. It was a Somalian refugee girl. Maybe 20 years old but likely younger. Full hijab and abaya. was there for the refugee English classes. I had to get her older sister who spoke a bit more English to level with her. I actually felt kinda bad for the girl.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Afterall, Stallman-level bullshit doesn't bring food to your table.

It would only bring toejam anyway.

 

[Sloppy Party Bottom]

Is it just me, or are sales people for tech companies just, in general, stupid as fuck? I ask a technical question and reference a physical location, and the reply doesn't even address my question (though it would be applicable in their other locations, I just misspoke) and says "we don't offer that in X location."

Same thing with indians. They submit a problem, you ask them pointed questions about how to duplicate the problem, and they reply with "it does not work saar. please fix saar."

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Is it just me, or are sales people for tech companies just, in general, stupid as fuck? I ask a technical question and reference a physical location, and the reply doesn't even address my question (though it would be applicable in their other locations, I just misspoke) and says "we don't offer that in X location."

Same thing with indians. They submit a problem, you ask them pointed questions about how to duplicate the problem, and they reply with "it does not work saar. please fix saar."

Sales people know how to sell first and foremost, and technical product knowledge is not something they are required to possess, much in the same way most techs couldn't sell ice cubes in hell. They are there for social skills that techs don't usually possess.

Occasionally, you may luck out and find a salesman who knows the product, but they're a rare breed.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

Same thing with indians. They submit a problem, you ask them pointed questions about how to duplicate the problem, and they reply with "it does not work saar. please fix saar."

They're also terrible when they're above you. The Indian Management Strategy is to immediately delegate all tasks downward. Immediately. Every task, no matter how mundane. I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked to "ask (this person) if they need assistance", "check (this ticket) to see what status it's in" as if you couldn't fucking do that yourself with four keystrokes and an enter after autocomplete comes up.

Indians arbitrarily barging in and interrupting workflows with very urgent basic tasks so they can offload any cognitive load, take credit for all successes, and blame their underlings for any interruption to output has been a blight on tech.

 

[Sloppy Party Bottom]

Indians arbitrarily barging in and interrupting workflows with very urgent basic tasks so they can offload any cognitive load, take credit for all successes, and blame their underlings for any interruption to output has been a blight on tech.

Hard agree here. If they can't be bothered to shit in a toilet and not on the wall, or to use a shower like a human, why should they be expected to do any part of the job they were ostensibly hired to do?

 

[Samuel Fuller]

I just remembered a really good one.

I once dealt with a user who didn't know what the Shift key did, and she actually engaged and disengaged Caps Lock every single time she wanted a capital letter.

When I explained how Shift works, she was floored.

 

[neal_rice]

Boss in previous job did not know how to copy and paste. How the fuck.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

I just remembered a really good one.

I once dealt with a user who didn't know what the Shift key did, and she actually engaged and disengaged Caps Lock every single time she wanted a capital letter.

When I explained how Shift works, she was floored.

Boss in previous job did not know how to copy and paste. How the fuck.

Guys, we all had read Rinkworks and other sites those stories were at, they are classic.

If it actually happened, my condolescences.

 

[neal_rice]

Guys, we all had read Rinkworks and other sites those stories were at, they are classic.

If it actually happened, my condolescences.

You're assuming everyone in the tech world is competent, they are not and some people just happen to fail upwards and get into positions of authority like my old boss (diversity hire). People just do not want to exercise their common sense , provided they had any in the first place.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

>Guys we're doing our annual deckchair shuffle "reorg".
>We consulted a lot of people for our strategy here. We talked to managers, our CTO, and even had a week long chat with the Pajeeta catlady in charge of HR! We mentioned zero engineers in this announcement.
>We have so many layers of management and so few corresponding engineers it's getting comical
>Anyway we needed to promote some engineers because we really had gaps in management that needed filling
>lolfuckyou we're not hiring replacement engineers that's too expensive

Management needs occasional beatings and Pajeet purges to stay functional.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Guys, we all had read Rinkworks and other sites those stories were at, they are classic.

If it actually happened, my condolescences.

The amount of people I have encountered who could not do their job without using a computer, but steadfastly refuse to actually learn how to use a computer is fucking STAGGERING.

The company I work for supports a company that actually has their finance department people issued two separate computers with accompanying mouse, keyboard and monitor because one of them got phished and the company lost $10,000. The users were too ignorant to be trained to use a VPN to reach an air-gapped finance subnet, then their manager found using a KVM switch confusing, so they have duplicate computers so they can't be compromised even if they successfully get phished.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

The amount of people I have encountered who could not do their job without using a computer, but steadfastly refuse to actually learn how to use a computer is fucking STAGGERING.

Old people are the WORST with this.

One time i was explaining to someone how to do something that involved going to the desktop and she immediately asked "What's a Desktop?"

My brain melted after that question.

 

[Linksys WRT]

We spent a ton of money and thousands of man-hours to build our log monitoring and remote management setup. It was working great for years and everyone was comfortable running it. Then one day, there's a new manager at the head. Sure enough, they decided to blow away all of the stuff we built in favor of a company that I knew that they knew the higher-ups in. Very obviously trying to get their buddies a payday.

Anyone who had a couple of brain cells left saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship, so all the smart people left the organization. New manager was not happy about losing smart people and realized that they needed to hire people to actually maintain the new system that they were building. So, who's dumb enough to take a dead-end job managing this make-work system for the benefit of a bunch of nepotists? Indians, of course! Who eventually had enough seniority to get promoted to management roles? Indians. And who did those Indians hire? More Indians!

FF to now, and the C-suite is not happy with them, they are over budget, and they have so little skill that they can't even tell you what the event code for a user login is (it's 4624). And who's taking the flak for this? The manager who decided to do a nepotism.

NEVER HIRE INDIANS. And don't hire nepotist managers either.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

I once dealt with a user who didn't know what the Shift key did, and she actually engaged and disengaged Caps Lock every single time she wanted a capital letter.

That is actually quite common for a surprising amount of people under 25, some are even very technically skilled otherwise... They also use ctrl+alt+2 to make an @. No biggie except Teams treats that kind of @ differently which can lead to problems...

 

[Samuel Fuller]

That is actually quite common for a surprising amount of people under 25, some are even very technically skilled otherwise... They also use ctrl+alt+2 to make an @. No biggie except Teams treats that kind of @ differently which can lead to problems...

The person in my anecdote was middle-aged and had been using a computer at work for 20 years.

It's a good thing that working in video rental and later satellite TV support had long since killed any faith in humanity I had once possibly possessed.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

I used to work in IT (Helpdesk role at an MSP, its hell, don't do it) for a few years and have mostly repressed my memories about it.
One thing I distinctly remember is when I would ask for someone to do a simple task (e.g., right click the Start button on a Windows machine) and they would go silent, then say something along the lines of "I don't know what the Start button is", despite using Windows machines every single day for work.
Would have to be incredibly descriptive about it (e.g., right click the Windows logo button in the bottom left corner of the screen) so there was no chance of error.
This happened several times. My old company only supported business customers too so I didn't get the grandma's who didn't know how to do anything other then open Facebook.
Working at an MSP is an amazing way to quickly destroy your faith in humanity in less then a month.